HireVue | Direct Messaging
UI / UX Design
Chat Widget
Previous releases of the Direct Messaging feature needed to meet more customer needs to migrate to the updated platform. A few key customers were coming up for renewal and mentioned they would churn if they couldn't use this feature as they had hoped.
My goal was to understand the pain points preventing the organizations from moving over, generate ideas to move them to the new platform feasibly and ensure we could continue selling the product to potential customers.
Timeline: 3 months
Role: UI/UX, Strategy, Research, User Flows, Prototyping
Platforms: WebApp/Chat Widget
Category: Human Resource
Direct Messaging Chat Widget
The problem
Some of the problems with Direct Messaging included:
Recruiters: wondering if or who had responded to candidates already (shared Dashboard).
Recruiters: didn't know when a candidate had responded to a message.
Recruiters: wanted to use Company provided technology to keep candidates from calling/texting their numbers.
Admins: wanted better insight into which team members can access which phone numbers.
Admins: wished to pay for fewer phone numbers.
Admins: want to be compliant.
Admins: want insights into what Candidates and Recruiters discuss.
Additionally, the only place to access the messages was on the Applicant Tracker page of the Dashboard. With thousands of candidates applying to various roles in a company (on the mid to low end), it was hard to keep track of the conversations as the table was constantly updating.
Understanding the use cases
There was no previous documentation found for previous implementation decisions. I worked with our User Experience Researcher to set up a testing plan to understand how customers used our Direct Messaging feature. We also wanted to know how they wished it worked in the future.
We talked to 10 customers in various industries and circumstances to broaden our understanding and understand how customers wanted to use this feature. Some of the outcomes were surprising; others aligned with our expectations.
The 4 main use cases determined from Customer Usability Sessions
The use cases defined
Use Case #1: These types of customers wanted their Store Managers to all share a phone number to converse with candidates, and then they wanted a Recruiting Marketer to have their phone number for running various campaign bulk messages to candidates.
Use Case #2: Everyone shares the same phone number. (But you can see who responded last to the candidate internally.)
Use Case #3: Each team type would share a phone number. (This use case and use case #1 are very similar, we could have lumped them together but opted to be specific since we discussed it with multiple customers in our research)
Use Case #4: Everyone would have their own phone number. (this was in line with how it functions today, and we didn't want to ruin those customers' processes in the transition)
The outcome
Limited by resources, I worked with the PM, and the Eng lead to determine if the engineers could build any solutions I explored within our existing experience. We worked together to determine ways that we could update the widget while being able to incorporate all the use cases we were looking to support.
Prototype walk-through
Taking accessibility changes into consideration
Previous versions of the chat widget didn't consider very many aspects of accessibility. Since we considered using the base widget for our new updates, I worked with the PM to prioritize accessibility accommodations in this version to meet WCAG 2.0 A and AA needs.
Main Section Before and After
Main Section Before and After (Detailed)
Reflections and learnings
Although there was a lot of promise in our research that this would be a promising result, this feature got deprioritized for various reasons. From a "push features and improve the users' experience," this was a failure.
But, this was very successful in understanding user needs, gathering information, and documenting the user experience for future PMs and Designers to use and fall back on. We were able to go through the customer journey in various industries and circumstances and to design something that seemed promising in continuous research.
Finally, the last piece of success from this project was that the Accessibility team implemented components of the UI during an upgrade that a third-party vendor approved for a VPAT, a lot of the influence of that audit and update came from the work handled in this project.
$650k+
Lost in renewal deals from customer churn
2X
in Engineering, CS, etc. cost in maintaining multiple platforms.
Let's work together!
I’m open to hearing about new and exciting opportunities. Let’s set up a time to virtually meet each other!